This could be the most surprising twist of the upcoming blockbuster movie “Fast & Furious 7,” slated to hit theaters on April 3. Brian O’Conner, the role being played by the late Paul Walker in the franchise, will not die in the movie, contrary to most perception that his character would.
It is hard to fault people for thinking that Brian O’Conner would perish in “Fast & Furious 7” since there is really nothing much to go on for his character because the actor who has been playing him since 2000 has died in a car accident in Southern California in November 2013.
But according to “Fast & Furious 7” Director James Wan, they simply did not kill off Paul Walker’s character from the movie series but only retired him gracefully.
Wan refused to elaborate on how he retired Brian O’Conner from the movie series but one thing he is sure about is that Paul Walker’s character did not perish at all in “Fast & Furious 7.”
Seamless
Director James Wan takes pride of the fact that he has been receiving positive remarks and reviews on how the movie played pretty seamless with Paul Walker being around on most scenes, being one of the main characters of the series, notes Yahoo! News.
Most film critics also agree with the observation and they have advised audiences who will be watching “Fast & Furious 7” in theaters next week to simply avoid trying to figure out how the Director did it with tricks or computer graphics so that they can fully enjoy the movie and not really think that Paul Walker is gone even before filming ended.
One film critic who had the opportunity to watch the advanced screening of the movie says that Walker was on the screen for most of the time and he found it impossible really to tell whether he is fully real or partly virtual on his scenes in the movie.
How they did it
As to how Wan and his crew made the scenes where Paul Walker’s character is present appear seamless is guaranteed to become one of the most talked about features of “Fast & Furious 7.”
The 38-year-old director worked on sifting through thousands of hours of footages that had Paul Walker on it from the previous films of the movie series. They simply worked on culling images and film clips for visuals, and also did the same for audio materials that Paul had done in past “Fast & Furious” films.
In addition to modern technology, Wan and his crew also brought in Walker’s two younger brothers as stand-ins to make sure that there is also a bit of realism to the scenes involving Brian O’Conner.
Wan also revealed that after the death of Paul Walker, he already wanted that his character would not die in “Fast & Furious 7.” He recalls that everyone also felt the same way so they each helped out in working to retire Brian O’Conner gracefully and send him off in the most honorable way that the Director and crew, as well as that other stars of the film, could ever think of.